Liverpool 5 - 0 Swansea (Talking Points)

Liverpool celebrated a nice, straight forward win on Sunday. For the first time in a while it was simply just good fun to watch us thoroughly dismantle a team. Granted this was a below par Swansea team who had one eye on their first ever major cup final to come next week but regardless, Liverpool  put them to the sword with no apologies. The icing on the cake was in the fact that Red-men FINALLY got the monkey of having recorded no victories against a top 10 team off their back. According to the "experts" for the last few weeks, the failure to record a victory over a team in the top 10 at the time we played them so far this season was evidence of how poor our results have been this season. However it turns out that this "fact" was categorically not a "fact". At the end of play on Saturday 8th of December Liverpool sat in 12th place in the table, West Ham sat comfortably in 10th position on goal difference. When Liverpool beat West Ham by 3-2 on Sunday the 9th December, we knocked West Ham out of 10th position but this doesn't change the actual fact that Liverpool beat a team in the top 10 for the first time this season on 9th December. 

You can only beat whats in front of you
There is no denying this fact, and in these terms the players selected by Brendan Rogers did a very good job. We were expected to win the game and we did so with aplomb. Where i usually preach keeping set-backs in perspective at this time it is important to keep a strong victory in perspective, after all it is not the first time Liverpool have put a mediocre team on the rack this year. Its a telling statistic that Liverpool have recorded 7 victories by a margin of 3 or more goals this season whereas Spurs have only recorded 2. The fact that Spurs sit 9 points ahead of Liverpool, with a game in hand, at the moment should tell you the relevance of this stat (For perspective Man Utd have only recorded 3 victories by more than 3 goals). Alternatively Liverpool have only recorded 3 single goal victories whereas Spurs have recorded 8. It goes someway to shows that, while victories of this type are fun entertaining and of course if managed correctly they can breed confidence, until we master the art of winning tight games, or managing to score when not playing to 100% it is likely that our point gathering will remain sporadic rather than consistent.

SAS
I think even the people who advocated the signing of Daniel Sturridge would admit to be somewhat surprised by just how quickly he has settled and become one of the most important members of our squad. His directness, pace and power breath something new into the team, that is sorely missed what he is absent. The danger he provides is 2 fold in that he is a threat so not only might he do some damage, opposition defenders have to worry about him so much that it frees up space for others. A lot of people were worried about moving Suarez in order to accommodate him, but its clear in the short time that they have appeared together that the sum of the SAS partnership is greater than the value of either individual S. We may still lack depth up front, more-so now in light of Fabio Borini's season ending injury but our first choice partnership has the potential to become one of the strongest on offer throughout the Premier League

A Real Brazilian?
Its no secret that it took a long time  for the Anfield faithful to take to Lucas when he first arived. There are many theories ranging from his long hair to maybe he was just a bit pants. One theory put forward by the man himself i believe is that when people heard we had signed a Brazilian they, maybe understandably, had flashes of Romario, Rivaldo, Ronaldiho or even Juninho flash through their minds. When those visions tried to match up with the stylings of Lucas' game some sort of crash happened and people could not help but feel let down. When Liverpool's newest Brazilian arrived, an Inho aswell there was never going to be such a conflict. On his full home debut he showed tricks, flicks and scored the goal which opened the floodgates to allay any fears of him adapting to life in England. Its early days of course and he is still just 20 year old but what he has shown glimpses of is how the 8.5 million outlay is no great gamble for a player with such potential. It is important to bed him in intelligently but at least the first hurdle of a goal is out of the way.

Is Enrique levelling out?
A lot of people were excited when Liverpool signed the Spanish full-back from Newcastle in last year's January transfer window. For the first few weeks of his Liverpool career it seemed like we may have captured the signing of the season. This didn't last too long however when his performances started to dip somewhat. In fairness it is important to caveat this a bit by reminding everyone that the whole teams level's seemed to drop in unison to the Spanish bulldog's. At the start of this season it seemed like things hadn't improved and what in the beginning we had taken as the norm, seemed now to be the exception meaning he had over performed in his early days. Credit should be given to BR for the improvements in Enrique's performances, but we should also give credit to the man himself. We are now talking about  a consistent level of performance over the last 8 to 10 weeks. Perhaps he is showing that this is his true level and it was not the better performances that were the blip, it was the period when he was not performing that was the exception.

What a win against Udinese could bring

So here we are, 5 hours to kick off in a game which, if we dont win would see us eliminated from a competition that many people didn’t want us to be in in the first place.


Things have changed since we first qualified for the competition. Most Liverpool fans I have spoken to want us to qualify from our group and make it to the knock out phase of the competition. The first time I noticed the shift in how people felt about this competiton was walking out of Anfield after we had allowed Young Boys a share of the spoils in a game where we had been sitting comfortably. The disappointment and in some cases anger on the faces of the Kopites showed that suddenly, this competition mattered.

The Europa League, to put it bluntly, is not a pretty competition. It is the uglier, slightly plumpier sister of the beautiful, slinky Champion League. It cant offer us prestige, it cant offer us vast amounts of money hell even if we win the thing we will have made significantly less than a team who made it through the group stages of the Champions League. It does have its uses though. It can offer us experience. Our younger players are getting a crash course in life as a professional footballer this season. They are experiencing highs and lows, games you are expected to win and games you find impossible to win. This will make us, and the players themselves, all the more stronger next season and even the season after that. the Europa league is something else though., it is European competition. Our young lads are going to experience something most of them have not had before, a do or die 90 minutes on foreign soil. Its not just the players either, when it comes to European experience our young manager is also operating at novice level. To win games like this breeds confidence and teaches players how to win. Its not just for this years competition that we need to win, it could be for the experience our players can bring into next seasons Champions League....

Liverpool 1 - 0 Southampton (Talking Points)

Liverpool got back to winning ways with a decent win over a struggling Southampton at Anfield on Saturday. It is a difficult game to some up, we played very well at times, should have put the game beyond the struggling Saints, didn't manage to score the 2nd goal and so ended the game with a nervousness which was not becoming of our stylish play throughout the game. There there were plenty of positives to take from the game not least of which being the simple fact of getting 3 PRemier League points at Anfield for only the 5th time in 2012. As ever there were some negatives too but overall i felt a lot more positive about how we may go forward from here after the game.

Now we fu*kin' love him:    
The return of Lucas to the starting line up was the most welcome surprise I got that day, (until later Saturday evening when I walked into my own surprise 30th birthday party arranged by my beautiful wife and nearly jumped through the roof) We had known of course that Lucas was in contention for a place in the squad but I think most presumed that he would be entering the fray from the bench. While we all have to be careful not to expect that the return of the great Brazilian stopper would be the end to all of our troubles, it was nice to see that some of the things I felt he would help us achieve were clearly evident in his 86 minutes on the pitch. Not only did he perform impeccably himself even though it is simply not possible that he is fully match fit after only 45 minutes for the U21 side, his return immediately lifted the performance of others who had had to temper their own games to make up for his absence. Joe Allen and Steven Gerrard were able to take up much more advanced positions which came much more naturally to them than the roles they had been asked to fill over the last few weeks. In fact the shape of the entire team looked a whole lot more balanced with Jose Enrique returned to his preferred full back position, and Glen Johnson returned to his natural spot at right full, it was clear to see that both felt much more comfortable travelling forward to support attacks, safe in the knowledge that should the ball be lost there would be some cover making its way to fill in. Lucas is quite simply the best defensive midfielder in the league and while it's clear that he will never be the man to score the goals that win the headlines, his very presence on the pitch can be enough to provide an attacking impetus to the side.

Its only Southampton:
Of course this is true, but at this stage of our development these are exactly the kind of games we have to be winning. In fairness, to give it your all and beat one of the top 4 gives you a great feeling and it can lift the optimism of fans and players not to mention the luxury of the bragging rights but until we can consistently beat the teams we are expected to beat, once off wins against the big boys will not make that much difference to our final league positions. The hard fact is that the fixture computer did not give too much leeway to Brendan Rogers at the beginning of the season. We had a run of games which meant it was clearly going to be difficult to put together a huge amount of points unless everything clicked immediately. We all know that that did not happen, although we can also accept that had it not been for some tough decisions and some bad luck without doing too much more, we could easily be 5/6 points better off from even the most difficult of those games. As we approach Christmas, and its run of games which comes thick and fast we have a number of games from which we can realistically hope for a high number of points. And with this in mind, Southampton was a great dress rehearsal and a great result to start off with. whisper it quietly but if we can manage to rack up a number of wins in succession it could feasibly become realistic to start targeting top 4. As of right now we are only 7 points behind Tottenham, which is certainly not an insurmountable gap.

When he scores a volley or when he............. uses his hand:     
OK, so its a pity that the 5th yellow card which leads to a one match ban for our favourite Uruguayan was received in such a silly and utterly avoidable fashion but what is done is done. For what its worth, I honestly think that this was a simple reflex action which was driven by the insatiable desire to win we all know he possesses, much like the other hand ball he is famous for was. Its difficult to know what BR is going to do in this situation, it could be an opportunity for a youngster to come in and stake a claim, but from watching the Europa League it doesn't seem like there are any of the deputy strikers which BR deems ready. If he had his eye on any of them I think they would have started more games in that competition so i think its unlikely they will come in. It's a pity because I've liked things i have seen in both Yesil and Morgan but to be fair to BR he has shown that he is to be trusted completely when it comes to the progress and the state of readiness where the youngsters are concerned so I would not questions his decisions there.. One Europa League experiment could be given another try however with Jonjo moving into the striker position as he did against Young Boys at Anfield. It seems that BR likes him in this advanced position although I am not totally convinced just yet. Although I am pretty sure it won't happen I would really like to see Steven Gerrard get the nod up top. Although I’m sure iI don't need to describe how good of a finisher he is, to me it makes perfect sense. Perhaps BR see's a forward role for Jonjo as something which will be more frequent in his future and if thats the case this provides a perfect opportunity to familiarise him further. For my money though, if someone is going to be on the end of a chance I would much prefer it to be Stevie rather than Jonjo.

You're either with us or against us

Its kind of hard judging Liverpool at the moment. In fairness if you asked me right now what i think about how we're doing my answer would be much the same as it would have been at the start of the season, basically we'll have to see how it pans out.

Where Spurs supporters, whose manager has been in place for a similar timeframe as Brendan Rogers, have seen fit to boo their team off their home pitch at least 3 times this season our own manager has seen his name sung by the anfield faithful a number of times. Just to put that into perspective, spurs currently sit in 5th place joint on points with Everton where Liverpool are currently in 12th 6 points of the champions league qualification.

Its not simply blind faith by fans either. if we look at things realistically there is no hiding the fact that after 10 league games under Hodgson we had more points than at the same juncture under Rogers and after those 10 games fans discontent with Hodgon was made widely known at most available opportunities, granted this was somewhat by his own doing in that (fabulous orator that he is) he specifically asked to be judged after 10 games. I have heard some Liverpool fans wondering why we should keep faith with Rogers when Hodgson was so readily cast away by supporters (an belatedly the owners). it is pretty simple really. What we have been able to see so far from Rogers is forward thinking where the only thing Hodgson could look to was the past. There is something to buy into under Rogers where all the Hodge could offer was a face scratch.

The problem Rogers has right now, is that unlike Rafa Benitez for example, he has nothing to point to on his CV to convince you that he can turn this situation around. There is no track record on which to lean. Using Rafa as the example, when struggling in the league in his first season we could look to his 2 La Liga titles for reassurance. With Rogers it is promotion to the PL with Swansea and one season where they performed better against expectations in the PL. Its not exactly reassuring. What is tangible though is what we can see on the field. We have seen our side dominate possession in most games this season. We have seen the blooding of youngsters, some as young as 17 slotting seamlessly into the side. I know full well that at times last season under Kenny we saw some beautiful passing football but it was rarely alongside the type of control we have seen so far this season.Its not much to cling too but its something. Whether that domination can start to turn itself into points is another story, if we are to take this as a starting point then its a good position to start from. If we can win the control of games, it can't take that much to turn winning control into winning matches.

A major problem at the moment is scoring goals. At the moment we have only Suarez who looks likely to score in any game, we really need to start sharing the goals throughout the team. Gerrard, Shelvey and Sterling have all had big opportunities over the last few weeks but  many for whatever reason the confidence to just stick it in the back of the net is lacking. Whether that will simply come with time or it is a more chronic problem time will tell but if we can make an astute signing in January to help out in this respect then i’m sure that things will improve quickly.

To break things down, it seems we have a side who cannot score, but can dominate possession. In this situation we wouldn't be in too bad of a state if we were solid at the back, but unfortunately it seems we are prone to shipping weak goals. The funny thing is our Centre Back partnership still looks like one of the best in the business on paper. I honestly think our first priority MUST be to sort out our defence and stop shipping goals. If we're not conceding so many we could maybe get by, even with our poor scoring record.  I think the re-introduction of Lucas can instantly improve our shape and make us stronger defensively while also improving out attack by moving the likes of Allen to his more natural advanced position.

As for Rogers I can honestly only say that i'm not making any judgements just yet. I've seen enough to mean that i still believe in what he is trying to achieve, but i can't honestly say that he definitely WILL achieve this. I don't subscribe to this idea that everything is black and white. Its not as simple as simply being for or against the manager, its not as simple as saying we are a shit team or a great team. Right now we are in transition. We’re not sure what we are going to get out of this season, and we are not sure what we are going to get out of this team. Performance wise we have seen improvements, even if they have not been accompanied by an improvement in points tally. I still support what this manager is trying to achieve, but it is too early to judge how successful we have been, or even can be.

At what point does the result become more important than the performance?

Liverpool are currently in the middle of their worst start to a league season for 10,000 years.... or something, maybe its not that long but its BAD, Sky Sports told me so! We opened the season with a poor 3-0 defeat away to West Brom, got a battling draw at home to the defending Champions, suffered defeat to an impressive Arsenal and had another battling draw at Sunderland. These results were poor but worse was to come with a home defeat to fierce rivals Man Utd. This run of league form has left us with a points haul which is paltry in any man’s language, except a German man, in his language its “dürftig”. The total is 2 points from a possible 15. I can hear you say it, “this is Liverpool?”. Surely the fans have had enough of this manager already. Surely they are booing the team off the park and a baying mob is gathering outside Anfield every night with pitch forks and flaming sticks demanding the player’s head on a plate? Well the thing is, they are not..... and dont call me Shirley! The reason they are not is because, through this haze of poor results, there has been a level of improvement. There have been bumps of course, its not been a complete incline. Against City we looked strong, but we lost a little something going into the Arsenal game. We battled at Sunderland but didn’t set the world alight. 

           Then came the international break, which was immediately followed by our first “proper” Europa League game against Young Boys of Berne. Going into this game I had passed comment that I had yet to see a proper show of Rodger’s influence. There had been glimpses but nothing tangible enough to convince me that we were on a steady path. Then Rodger’s made the decision which most fans agreed with by throwing our Young Boys into the game against Berne’s Young... (yeah you’ve all heard the joke by now, I’ll spare you). What followed was an exhibition. Again it wasn’t infallible, we conceded 3 goals, but we came back twice to win a game away from home and we dominated the game for the most part. Its a competition few care about (I do, but we’ll speak about that again) and we put out a junior team, not even a reserve team, this was a team of mostly youth players. With that in mind, it shouldn’t have bothered most fans what we managed to do. The win and performance by a team far removed from our first 11 in a devalued competition shouldn’t have meant anything. It did though. It struck a chord. It showed us what was possible. It showed us this manager has a plan, and when its followed, this is what can happen.

The main men returned for the next game, the big one, the home tie versus ManU. From the first minute, Liverpool looked up for this one. The immediate effort and commitment maybe owes some credit to the magnitude of the game following the Truth about the 96 deaths at Hillsborough finally being released to the wider public, but the quality of the performance does not. The quality could only have come from the mentality preached by the manager and the talent of the players. We even went down to 10 men after 20 minutes or so but still the performance levels remained and we held control of the game for the most part, even taking the lead at the start of the second half. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be in the end, the numerical advantage took its toll in the long run and a more than dubious penalty decision offered the 3 points to ManU and they took them without a question. At the end of the game, fans were understandably disappointed but few were downhearted. The only frustrations which were spoken were those against the referee.

The kids returned, along with a significant new face to beat a strong West Brom side at the Hawthorns in the Carling Cup. The significant new face is another reason for the optimism of the fans as Jerome Sinclair became the new holder of the record for youngest ever Liverpool player in a competitive game, in a funny twist of fate Sinclair was on the pitch at the same time as the previous record holder Jack Robinson. This was another strong performance and another new face Nuri Sahin managed to score his first goals for the club.

From what I have written above I think its pretty clear to see why Liverpool fans are keeping their chins up right now and why optimism is trumping pessimism at the moment. But that is exactly what brings us up to here and the question which opened this article, at what point does the result become more important than the performance? Up to now we’ve been able to acknowledge the fact that our opening to the season was particularly difficult in itself, when you put on top of that the new manager and the forming of a new team plus implementation of a new mentality certain allowances were always going to be made. The way the team has been improving over that difficult start has made the allowances last a little longer, but that difficult start is past us now. What we are facing into is a run of 3 very winnable games. First up comes Norwich away and while we have been able to take good performances up to now, and we will expect a good performance on Saturday too, will that be enough or would the fans forgo a performance at this point for the sake of 3 points? I mean, of course, in an ideal world we would have both but as we have learned over the last few season, just because we should, or could, win doesn’t mean we will. If that turns out to that we do not win but keep our performance levels will the patience of the fans be extended or will the pressure suddenly be heaped upon the manager? I’d be interested to see people post their own opinions in the comments section below to know what people think. Lets hope this is a question which doesn’t have to be answered just yet. There is plenty to be optimistic about, if we can get our first league win under Rodgers on Saturday the fans will have something tangible to hang their belief on and will help him prove himself to the players and encourage them to keep working with them. If not..... well, we’ll have to look at that next week.